It’s proving tougher to keep this blog updated that we originally thought! After well over another week off the grid, overcoming new challenges, seeking out new experiences and tentatively trying to take routes off the well beaten path there never seems to be much down time to write let alone get an internet connection to send an update.

We are now in Maun, Botswana and soon to set off on what may prove to be our biggest 4×4 challenge yet as we will try to take the off road route across the flooded pans of Moremi and Chobe National Parks to arrive in Kasane in a few days time. Warnings abound with the risks of overland travel right now in this region due to the conditions following the rains and floods but we’ve spoken with enough people to feel confident we can make this classic route. The ease with us getting the permit however shows that few independents are currently doing this leg. So it’s with nervous excitement and a good sense of trepidation that we restock supplies, fill the reserve jerry cans with diesel and set off for the 400km of off road that will prove to be slow going through mud and sand. The confidence comes from what we’ve seen this Land Cruiser plough through in Northern Namibia and also that the going is never quite as tough as we’ve been warned!

A prudent flexibility to alter ones plans, based on changing conditions, is undoubtedly a requirement for successful independent overland travel through the heart of Africa but you need to balance that in equal measure with a gritted determination to go where you want to go and then buttress that with a self-confidence that you can push through the barriers (real or imagined) that develop along the way. Without tilting this balance the temptation is to take the path with least resistance and that will put you on the “well-trodden” one that we usually and intentionally want to avoid.

Once you are off the beaten path you’ve already made an “irrational decision” by most people’s standards and gauging the relative “rationality” of choices after this can be a rather nebulous affair.   This also makes accessing the information you gather on route about conditions from locals or the few similar travellers you may meet an inexact science. People, including ourselves, provide information through the filter of our own judgment and experience which means “reality” is always refactored through that changing lens. Simply put, things are never quite as bad or as good as you are told.

We could write so much about the experiences we have been fortunate enough to share on the last leg of our journey since the last update as the landscapes which defined our first stretch gave way to the peoples that defined our second. We pushed through the flooded rivers of the Damaraland, seeing the remarkable thousands of year old rock engravings and paintings that were left as an record of early man, as we headed up to the far North of Namibia and to the Angolan border where we spent some time with traditional Himba pastoral communities who stubbornly defy modernity across this rugged and remote land. The women, naked except for a goat skinned skirt, caked from head to toe in a deep-red ochre clay (red stone ground to a powder mixed with fat) look like spectral figures. Elaborate headdresses and jewellery further enhance their striking appearance. Entering their small villages, typically made up of a dozen or so mud and thatch huts, is like stepping back into a time warp so medieval is the assault on the senses. The cattle are closely guarded within the wooden fence of the village and the peoples’ lives revolve around them. Through a cascading series of connections we found ourselves invited to the funeral of a Chief’s young son who had died recently of an illness. It was an uncomfortable honour to be able to attend this somber affair but provided a powerful insight into their culture. We could write an entire update on the impressions of this one day, the universal human emotions of grief, the powerful grip the belief in witch craft still has over large parts of Africa, the stunning aesthetics of the young Himba warriors and their mohawk hair style, the tight bounds of community and family, the incredibly deep cultural contrast of our Western morality with a community whose men openly share wives and the fathering of children etc.

In Opuwo, a dusty cross roads frontier town in Kaokoaland the the Himba come to trade what little they have for whatever modernity has to offer them and here they mix with the Herero women in

brightly coloured long flowing Victorian gowns and head dresses, a legacy of the early missionaries who were appalled by the semi-nakedness and convinced them to where more the European style of clothing.

Alas it is the factor of “time” that proves to be our accompanying guest and it hangs over us most days reminding us that we have to always move on if we are to make progress across this vast continent. So it was that we headed back away from the Angolan border South East passing through Etosha National Park were we slept with the trumpeting of Elephants and avoided the many small herds of giraffes, zebra, wildebeest and antelope that we came across.   Leaving Namibia, we choose to take a remote track through the western Kalahari, much more green than it’s desert name would suggest, across sandy roads as our gateway to Botswana because this route would allow us to experience the indigenous San community who are the last of the hunter-gatherers of Western Africa. A brief stay with one community was a fascinating experience and the warmth with which they opened up their life to us, taking us on a walk into the bush where they showed us the plants that provide their medicine, the roots for their food or even poison for their arrows they use when hunting etc. Once again you could feel an ancient connection to our past slipping away under the relentless tide of modernity. It was tempting to take up their elder’s offer of living with them in their village for a few weeks and we seriously debated this as an alternative to our end goal of arriving in Nairobi, but, we decided to push on and crossed the remote border post of Dobe (only two or three vehicles a day pass through) into Botswana. Arriving into Maun we had a hectic afternoon organizing the Land Cruiser to be taken in for repairs (rear suspension needed work) and booking ourselves into a private lodge in the Okovanga Delta for a few days well deserved slice of luxury. A small private plane flew us in to the water logged delta and recharged we arrived yesterday back into Maun and prepare now to set out off road to Kasane.